Up on the Rooftop

Harper and I visited the Met to see the Roxy Paine sculpture on the roof: Maelstrom. Which was very cool, and silver, and big, and tentacled. We got there early and had the place to ourselves.

Harper is good at sharing fruit snacks with her animals. Sometimes she will share with us but usually she offers one and then retracts her offering and pops it into her mouth right in front of us.

June Vistors: Part Two

Marc's sister, Erin, and her friend, Rae, arrived last Wednesday night. They had to march around in the rain for most of their long weekend. We joined them when we could, and for all of the rain on Saturday. Highlights of their visit include:

-taking a leisure bike ride through the park on Friday

-seeing a mostly funny performance of machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines, machines on Friday night

-eating Alsatian food for brunch and Belgian treats for the rest of the day on Saturday

-wandering through the East Village and walking away with some goodies from De La Vega's shop

-staying awake through the NY Philharmonic's entire performance on Saturday night, and particularly enjoying the exuberant reaction to Sibelius's Second Symphony from the man sitting right behind us

-observing and analyzing Wilson quirks

We stopped to play with the hungry, hungry hippos in the park.

Frites on Saturday

Not only was Sunday Father's Day, it was also Erin's birthday. Somehow the only thing I ended up doing this morning was ironing Marc's shirt and laying it out with a new tie that I found at the thrift store. I also wished Erin a happy birthday. Marc and Erin took Harper to the little French bakery down the street and came home with baguettes, croissants, and chocolate and apricot pastry. And from our trip to the cheese shop the day before, Marc was able to create an enormous spread of pure saturated fat for his Father's Day breakfast and Erin's birthday breakfast.

Caught in the rain. Again.

We devoured another angel heath cake on Sunday night to honor Erin on her birthday.

Bubbles?

Harper is more serious about bubbles than she is about anything else. She can even look at pictures of bubbles and get happy. Thank goodness. Otherwise we would be outside blowing bubbles all day long.

CAS Student/Faculty Basketball Game 2009

The first annual student/faculty basketball game at Marc's school was held on one of the few hot Fridays in June. Alyssa and I and kids hiked uptown 30 blocks on the sunny side of the street to get there. To see Marc dominate. I felt like a proud parent when all of Marc's co-workers approached me after the game to tell me how mad Marc's skills are on the court. Even with all of Mr. Wilson's skills the teachers barely pulled out the win, which was pleasantly surprising.

June Visitors: Part One

Alyssa and Mila were in town last week for a good time. To start things off I made Alyssa walk around outside LaGuardia airport for a while or so while I drove around trying to find her by asking her if she could see this landmark or that green Hertz rental car bus before I discovered I was at the wrong terminal. To make it up to Alyssa I took her to one of my favorite thrift stores where she found some good deals.

Enjoying the garden and the shrimp burrito at El Paso Taqueria.

And the fountain.

Taking one of many granola bar breaks. It turns out children can live on Fiber One granola bars for a week.

When Harper woke up in the morning her first word was always "Mia." When she found her Harper would follow Mila around including into the bathtub, and especially to the toilet.

Nice girls

It's nice when visitors come to town and they want to go to places we've never been. (And it's nice when they come and they want to go to places we've been before, for the record.) We stopped at the Central Park Zoo for a few hours on Friday morning and had a wonderful time posing with fake rabbits and turtles, feeding and petting the sheep and some goats, and watching polar bears make love.

We finally checked off dancing on the big piano at FAO Schwartz.

I do not usually smile this big after musicals. But In The Heights deserved a smile this big because it was so good. And thanks to Alyssa we only had to pay $26.50 for each ticket because we won the lottery. Or, Marc and Harper won the lottery. But it's Alyssa's fault.

The Hoosiers

We treated Harper and Mila to a playground in Central Park on Monday morning.

Girls gone wild.

Visiting Brooklyn

The other day, Harper and I drove across the bridge to Brooklyn to see our friend Dynette. She took care of Harper for six months when I went back to work in January 2008. Dynette and her aunt gave us a very warm welcome and let Harper do whatever she wanted, like wear her shoes on the bed, ask for yogurt and then refuse to eat it, and leave a trail of cracker crumbs all over their house.

We walked to a neighborhood park that we vowed to return to this summer, and had a nice time visiting our old friend.

all photos by Dynette

yerbabuena in the backyard

Yerbabuena in the garden on a lovely Saturday evening in June.

Harper really hits her groove.

Good music + nice friends + perfect weather + Marc's signature taco salad = we will stay here for one more year